


One Song (My Heart Keeps Singing)

by iam93percentstardust



Series: Tony Stark Bingo Mark IV [4]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) - Alternate 2012 Timeline, Fluff and Angst, Happy Ending, M/M, Misunderstandings, Non-Traditional Soulmate Dynamics, Tony Stark Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-28
Updated: 2020-11-28
Packaged: 2021-03-10 04:20:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,683
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27758299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iam93percentstardust/pseuds/iam93percentstardust
Summary: When Thor is old enough to understand what a Heartsong is, he goes to his mother to ask her why he can’t understand the language his is in. He listens as she tells him about the first soulmates who couldn't understand their Heartsong until the day they meet, excited by the thought of a grand adventure, one that will take him across the cosmos in search of his One.He’ll search all the Nine Realms if he has to.
Relationships: Tony Stark/Thor
Series: Tony Stark Bingo Mark IV [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1984891
Comments: 30
Kudos: 433
Collections: Tony Stark Bingo Mark IV





	One Song (My Heart Keeps Singing)

**Author's Note:**

> angxlsgrxce said:  
> i’ve been ruminating on this because i couldn’t think of any prompts but. how bout. thunderiron soulmate au where asgardians don’t have soulmates or they have a different concept of soulmates than midgard, and tony grew up with the belief he never had a soulmate? if that prompt doesn’t spark joy then lemme know and i’ll send another!!! ily
> 
> Thank you for letting me take so much liberty with this prompt!
> 
> Title: One Song (My Heart Keeps Singing)  
> Collaborator: iam93percentstardust  
> Card Number: 4012  
> Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27758299  
> Square Filled: S5 - Misunderstandings  
> Ship: Thunderiron  
> Rating: T  
> Major Tags: Soulmates, Fluff and Angst  
> Summary:When Thor is old enough to understand what a Heartsong is, he goes to his mother to ask her why he can’t understand the language his is in. He listens as she tells him about the first soulmates who couldn't understand their Heartsong until the day they meet, excited by the thought of a grand adventure, one that will take him across the cosmos in search of his One.  
> He’ll search all the Nine Realms if he has to.  
> Word Count: 6683

When Thor is old enough to understand what a Heartsong is, he goes to his mother to ask her why he can’t understand the language his is in. Even at that age, he knows better than to go to his father to ask. What makes Odin a great king also makes him a terrible father—he remembers all too well his father’s hasty, ill-thought-out explanation for why Loki had a name on his wrist instead of a song in his heart (Loki had frozen the entire palace for a week when he’d discovered the truth)—so it is his mother that Thor turns to.

Frigga smiles at him and lifts him up onto her lap. With her hands deftly twisting shapes in the air, she spins him the old familiar tale of the first soulmates, a tale so old and spread across the cosmos that their names have long since been lost. Golden light spills from her fingers, painting the pictures in the air so he can see them. Thor has heard the tale many times before but this time, Frigga doesn’t stop there. Instead, she begins to tell him the story of Astrid, who had a song in her heart, just like they do today, but could not recognize the language her song was in. Frigga tells him of the despondency Astrid fell into at the realization that she wouldn’t be able to recognize her soulmate and then she tells him about Jandar the Light Elf, who spoke a different language than Astrid, but they were able to understand each other because of the powers of the Allspeak. And lastly, Frigga tells him about the first time Jandar sang and suddenly, Astrid could understand the words of her Heartsong.

“And they lived together forever?” Thor asks her.

Frigga lightly touches the tip of his nose. “Yes, they did, my little princeling. And that is why you do not yet understand the words of _your_ Heartsong.”

“Because they’re not Asgardian,” Thor says knowledgeably.

“Exactly.”

“So I’ll have to look for them!” he exclaims.

“Well—”

But Thor doesn’t hear her telling him that soulmates are destined to meet, too excited as he is by the thought of a grand adventure, one that will take him across the cosmos in search of his One. He’ll search all the Nine Realms if he has to.

* * *

Thor isn’t entirely surprised when Loki manages to escape with the Tesseract. Disappointed that no one had their eyes on either prize or captive, yes, but not surprised. Loki is a trickster after all and despite the magic-suppressing cuffs, he would not have been shocked to learn that Loki had figured out a way to work around them and caused Stark’s heart attack.

Stark, after all, is convinced that there’s no way the arc reactor could have failed, despite the stress he had put it through. And with not only a second Captain running around, but apparently also a second Stark that no one had noticed, save for the AI, it seems likely indeed that Loki had managed a way around his cuffs.

For now, though, it means Thor is trapped on Midgard. Odin’s own magic had only been enough to get him _to_ Midgard, not to get him back, and as the Bifrost is still in the process of being rebuilt, the Tesseract had been his only option for getting home.

It’s not the worst fate, he supposes. While it has nothing on the fineries of Asgard, the newly-christened Avengers Tower is nice enough and he does like Midgard, despite New York being very different than Puente Antiguo. As for the team, while Thor had half-expected the Avengers would fall apart following the Battle of New York—he’s seen many such teams do so before—this team seems to have enough on their plate that they fall naturally into a rhythm of living and working together.

Stark, with ideas of catching up to Loki and the Tesseract, has a plan for redesigning and equipping the Quinjet so that it can go into space. Dr. Banner has heard reports of a second Hulk causing havoc near Bleecker Street. And Captain Rogers, at first distracted by something that Loki had told him during their battle for the scepter, comes back from SHIELD one afternoon with disturbing news.

“I do not understand,” Thor says as they’re gathered around the conference table. “What is this Hydra?”

“They were the Nazi’s science division,” Dr. Banner says.

He starts to ask what _that_ was but then Stark says, “The Nazis believed in a superior race, one that was called to dominate all others but in particular, they hated anyone Jewish. I can send you a couple articles but—”

“But the things they did were horrifying,” Captain Rogers says darkly. “And you should know that before you read what happened.”

Thor thinks about the genocides he has witnessed on other worlds, the peace he has worked hard to keep and protect, and he nods. He understands what they’re trying to warn him about. “So this Hydra, they were scientists?”

“More than just that,” Stark says. “Their leader, Johann Schmidt, believed in Norse mythology, _your_ mythology. He believed it was all real.”

“He was obsessed with finding the Tesseract,” Captain Rogers continues, “so that he could make weapons that would allow him to control the world. He had Erskine’s serum, just like I did, but he believed it made us gods.”

“And now they’re back?” Clint asks. “Are you sure?”

“Hard to misinterpret Rumlow telling me, ‘Hail Hydra.’”

“I just don’t get it,” Stark says. “Why would they think that _Captain America_ of all people is Hydra?”

“I don’t know,” Captain Rogers says. “But one thing’s clear: we’re going to have to divide up here. We’ve got too much going on to focus on only one thing at a time. So, Dr. Banner, Barton, you’re on Bleecker Street. Barton, you said you have contacts in that area, yeah?”

“I got contacts all over New York,” Barton says proudly.

Romanoff scoffs. “Because you keep falling into dumpsters with them.”

Stark looks horrified. “You…fall into dumpsters?”

“Yep! Best way to meet someone, I always say.”

Captain Rogers interrupts before the situation can devolve any further, “Thor, Stark, I want you on the Quinjet. The sooner we can track down Loki and the Tesseract, the better.”

“Oh Captain, my Captain,” Stark says, winking at Thor.

“Romanoff, you’re with me. We’re going to figure out what’s going on in SHIELD.”

* * *

Stark—“Please call me Tony, Stark was Howard”—isn’t a bad person to partner with, all things considered. Midgard may not be as advanced as Asgard is but Tony has a mind to rival Jane Foster’s, and hers is a rare mind indeed, even amongst the geniuses of his people. Tony’s mind is quick and knowledgeable. He sees things that few others would ever be able to even guess at, from what horrors may follow the Chitauri to the best way to equip the Quinjet for space travel to Loki’s possible plan. And he’s funny, so very funny, and quick with a quip and startlingly pretty when he flashes that quicksilver smile at Thor as they’re bent over an engine.

Yes, he rather likes working with Tony Stark.

“I know my brother,” Thor says one day. “Or, I did, once. I believe he was under duress when he attacked this planet.”

Unlike nearly everyone else Thor has shared this theory with, Tony doesn’t immediately dismiss him. He tilts his head, thinking it over, and eventually says, “Why?”

“The Chitauri have been under the leadership of the Mad Titan for many years. I don’t believe Loki would have been able to sway them to his cause, even with his silver tongue.”

“He could have been using the scepter.”

Thor shakes his head. “I believe that Thanos has had the scepter this entire time. I do not believe it was something Loki gave to him. And—” He hesitates, waits for Tony to look away from his robot and give him an open, encouraging nod before continuing. “Loki has always had a heart full of mischief but never of malice, not until my thwarted coronation. He had been talking for months of hearing a voice whispering to him at night. My father thought it madness, my mother believed it to be the Norns. But now I wonder…”

“You think it might have been Thanos?”

“There are items in my father’s treasure vault that could tempt even the Mad Titan. When Loki brought the Frost Giants to Asgard, they went straight for the treasure vault, presumably for an heirloom of their people, but they would have been able to walk away with a number of things had they succeeded. If Loki had taken the throne, he could have granted Thanos access to the vault.”

Tony studiously looks away from him and Thor sighs deeply. He’s lost him too then.

“You do not believe me,” he says quietly.

“You gotta remember, the only interaction any of us have ever had with your brother is when he tried to take over New York,” Tony points out, waving a wrench in his general direction. The robot, DUM-E, follows it with his claw, supposedly waiting for Tony to accidentally let go of it and send it flying across the room so he can chase after it (a common game that the two of them have played often while Thor is in the lab). “We don’t have the same history with him that you do.”

Thor sighs again. He knows that what Tony says is true. Loki has not done much to endear himself to the Midgardians, but there is more to his brother than death and destruction. He just doesn’t know how to make anyone else see it.

“But,” Tony adds slowly, “I saw what was out there, waiting to come through that portal.”

He shudders and Thor cannot help but think of all the times he’s come across Tony in the middle of the night, sitting in the living room with a full, untouched glass of scotch in his hand. Clint, he knows, has taken to slipping into Tony’s room at night to sleep curled around him, the two most impacted by Loki’s invasion finding comfort in each other. Natasha sometimes joins them, and he wonders if those are the nights that she spends remembering the threats Loki made to her.

“I don’t think one man, even a god, could have controlled all that,” Tony finishes after a moment. He frowns thoughtfully. “What do you hope he’s doing out there, if you don’t think he’s taking the Tesseract to Thanos?”

There are many things that Thor _thinks_ Loki is doing but as for what he _hopes_ he is doing… “I hope he is searching for his soulmate.”

He isn’t entirely certain what he expects Tony’s reaction to be but Tony freezing and gaping at him isn’t it. It takes a lot to make the genius look as surprised as he might feel and he takes a moment to be proud that he’s managed it before he realizes that there’s no reason for Tony to be as surprised as he is.

“His _what?”_ Tony exclaims.

“His soulmate,” Thor says. “I know you don’t much like him but even my brother has a soulmate.”

“Focusing on the wrong thing there, Point Break,” Tony tells him. “Go back to the soulmate part, that’s an actual _thing?”_

“…Yes?”

“Soulmates, like heart’s true desire, destined to be together forever, stuff that teenage girls dream about, soulmates?”

“Tony, I do not know what—”

“Never mind,” Tony says, waving an airy hand. “But really, soulmates?”

He’s slowly starting to understand, though the picture it paints is a surprising one. In all his years, all his travels, he’s never come across a realm that doesn’t have soulmates. He had thought it a universal constant but the way Tony is asking about it, he presumes that they’re more of a legend here than a constant. He has questions—so many questions—but he thinks it might be polite to let Tony ask his first.

“Aye,” he says. “Soulmates.”

“Can I see?”

He knows he must look surprised at Tony’s question because Tony quickly backtracks, “I mean, if it’s private or sacred, sorry, you wouldn’t want to show me, probably not even if it _wasn’t_ private, and hey, I get it, no need to apologize and—”

“Tony.”

Tony goes quiet but he’s so anxious he’s practically shaking and Thor gives him a reassuring smile.

“It’s not private. My people do not have soulnames like the Frost Giants or marks like the Vanir. We have Heartsongs, the first song you will ever hear your beloved sing,” he explains.

“And have you met your—what’s the word?”

“One,” Thor says. “My One. No, I have not. They are not Asgardian and, though I have searched a long time, I have not yet found them.”

“Oh,” Tony says softly. Then, “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“It must be lonely.”

He chuckles. “I imagine it would be, if I had spent all those years alone. But just because there is someone out there who’s soul matches mine perfectly, it doesn’t mean I’ve been alone all these centuries. It’s not uncommon for Asgardians with Ones from other realms to take lovers while they wait. We live a long time after all, the longest of nearly every other realm.”

He means for it to be reassuring but Tony just looks sadder. He puts his wrench down and joins Thor next to one of the many cars Tony owns. Asgardian vehicles never developed in the direction of cars but he finds them an ingenious concept. Bruce is teaching him how to drive so that he may get a license and hopefully one day be able to drive one of Tony’s cars, which are capable of things most other cars are not, to go off of Clint’s ecstatic reaction to them.

“Is it the same?” Tony asks him, resting a hand on Thor’s arm. “Do you love them the same?”

“Of course not,” Thor says, laughing. “They aren’t my One, how could I love them the same?”

He realizes the moment he says it that it’s the wrong thing to say. Tony’s face falls as he grimaces.

“Is…is it the same for you?” he asks, unsure how it could possibly be. Surely Tony hasn’t loved everyone he’s ever been with the same. That would be—would be heartbreaking and impossible and—

Tony’s smile is small and sad and bitter and fond all at once. “Always.”

* * *

The thing is, he doesn’t understand. There is someone out there—or there _will_ be—who was crafted by the great, wide universe to be a perfect match to him. _He_ was crafted to be a perfect match to someone. Of course, what he’s felt for people in the past could never possibly measure up to that. His soulmate is meant to be the great love of his life, the other half to his very being. No one else in all the realms could ever be that for him so how could he love them the same? It would be an insult to his soulmate to compare them to anyone else.

The thing is, though, he _wants_ to understand.

* * *

It doesn’t make sense and he knows that. He is meant to love one person above all others. Pretending otherwise is an affront to his soulmate. But—

But he watches Tony, who throws himself into relationship after relationship, loving all of them equally though they rarely return the favor. And he watches Natasha, who treats love as though it’s a game for children as she waltzes from one glitzy, glamorous mission to another. And he watches Steve, who still mourns the loss of the great love of his life even though she stills lives.

He watches and he wonders how they manage it. How can they bear to love over and over and over again and never once have the assurance of knowing that one of them will be it for them? How can they do it without knowing that there is someone waiting for them? How can they do it when they have no idea if it’ll ever even work out?

“You never have that assurance,” Bruce informs him one early morning. The sun hasn’t yet risen but Thor is awake anyway, always bright and cheerful in the mornings. As for Bruce, he isn’t certain that the good doctor has actually gone to bed yet. The entire team has since found out that he has a soulmate and they’ve had plenty of questions. Most of them seem to be of the same opinion that Tony is, though none have had quite the same visceral reaction.

Thor idly stirs two sugar cubes into the tea Bruce prepared for him. “How do you mean?” he asks eventually, after puzzling it over and coming up with nothing.

Bruce sits down across from him and takes the little carafe of cream to pour into his own cup. He stares out the window for a long moment and then says, “Think about it like this: you say you can’t love anyone as much as you love your soulmate, right?”

“Aye.”

“But what if you’ve known your soulmate for a long time before they finally sing in front of you?”

Thor cocks his head to the side. “As in…”

“As in, you’re friends and you don’t hear them sing for a couple centuries. Or perhaps you were already dating but they don’t sing for you. Will you suddenly love them more?”

“Of course I would,” Thor says plainly, still not quite understanding.

“But what if you’re with someone else when you hear your soulmate sing? Will you leave the person you already love for your soulmate?”

“But I won’t love them the way I do my soulmate. They would know that.”

“Would they?” Bruce asks quietly. He takes a sip of his tea and looks out the window again. “Our lives are so short. Some people spend their entire lives searching for someone to be with, thinking it’s the most important thing they could be.”

“To be married?”

“To be _loved_.” He takes another sip. “Only now, it’s implied that our love, the only love we can give, isn’t enough because it’s not a _soulmate_.”

“But if that’s all you can give—”

“But it’s still not good enough,” Bruce interrupts and now he looks back at Thor, eyes dark and intense. “That’s what you imply when you say that your love for your soulmate is greater than anything else. Our love isn’t enough to make you stay. It’s not enough to make you love us as we love you. It’s just not enough.” He shrugs and goes back to the window. “I don’t know if it’s as sad as Tony seems to think but it’s definitely not a happy thought.”

* * *

Thor doesn’t think that Tony calls it sad though because of what it means for himself, but rather what it means for Thor. And that’s something that he still can’t seem to understand. But if there is anything that his father’s lessons have taught him over the last few years, it’s that he must learn to admit his ignorance. So he goes to Tony, who is currently putting the last few touches on the new and improved Quinjet, and asks.

“Because it must be a lonely existence,” Tony says softly. “To know that you can never give your entire heart to someone, or that everyone in your life is just a placeholder.”

And Thor is abruptly reminded that for as childish as Tony’s prank wars with Clint may be and as petty as his arguments with Steve are, he still knows enough about people to have successfully run a business for many years. It is easy to forget, he thinks, that Tony knows people well enough to be able to talk them into giving him funding, into donating their prized possessions to his charities, into believing every word he says. After all, it’s a persona that Tony himself creates—to let people believe that he’s ignorant of their thoughts and feelings.

But he shouldn’t forget.

* * *

Thor knows that he has, in the past, demonstrated a tendency to be shallow. He has taken lovers before because they were beautiful or because they flattered him or on one memorable occasion, because they had prehensile tentacles and Loki had recommended he try it at least once.

His attraction to Tony, however, isn’t like that.

He remembers a conversation he had had with his father not long after the Bifrost had been destroyed, about his attraction to Dr. Foster. Odin hadn’t been able to understand it, had reminded him that Midgardians live such short lives, how could he possibly be attracted to one? Thor remembers telling his father that he’d been attracted to her mind, the way she had been capable of unlocking and understanding the secrets of the universe, how she had always kept an open mind despite being a woman of science, which he had been led to understand were not usually so open minded.

His attraction to Tony is something closer to that but still not quite.

It’s like a slow tide when it happens, creeping closer and closer in his mind until he looks over at Tony during their test flight of the Quinjet and realizes that Tony is positively beautiful and Thor would do anything to keep him smiling like that. It’s a surprising thought at first, not just because when he thinks about it, he realizes that what had first drawn him to Tony was his quick wit and brilliance. But he had rather thought that his and Tony’s opposing views on soulmates would have cut any attraction there to the quick. To discover it hadn’t is as much a shock to him as realizing that Loki still lived after falling from the Bifrost.

And yet…

He can see it, in a way. Tony has always reminded him of Dr. Foster and Thor had clearly had no problems falling into lust with her. Tony is sarcastic and funny, just as Fandral is, though his ill-conceived dalliance with one of his closest friends hadn’t lasted longer than a few days. Tony is kind and generous, though he hides it under snark and self-deprecation. And Tony _is_ beautiful, though he’s sometimes too covered in grease to notice it.

But Tony has a problem with how Thor treats those who aren’t his soulmates. And Thor isn’t willing to subject Tony to that treatment, if it’s not what he wants, no matter how much Thor might be attracted to him.

So he tucks his attraction away in the back of his mind and gives Tony a soft look as he asks, “How are the stars?”

He knows that Tony had been worried about taking the Quinjet into space, mind still fixed on the wormhole and the horrors it had shown him. It had taken quite a lot of convincing for Tony to be willing to even fly the Quinjet into the magnetosphere, let alone any further into space.

“I think we’re doing okay,” Tony says, gaze fixed firmly on the controls. “Levels are holding steady. We didn’t lose anything important during takeoff.”

Over the comms, Bruce, back at the Tower, interrupts, “Does that mean we lost anything unimportant?”

Tony flashes that quicksilver grin at the control, though Bruce can’t see it, of course. “Not even a little bit, Brucie Bear. I’m gonna open up the throttle, we’ll try an orbit around the earth, see if the Quinjet can handle it. Be back in about ninety minutes.”

“Tony,” Thor says gently, as Bruce’s connection cuts out and Tony eases the acceleration forward. “The stars.”

Tony’s hands still on the controls. “I can’t look at those,” he admits. “They might not be the stars I saw in the—then, but they’re still stars.”

His voice is heartbreakingly sad and Thor remembers being told once that Tony’s childhood dream had been to become one of the astronauts, Midgard’s versions of the Asgardian star sailors.

“You need to be able to look at them if you’re to navigate by them should the controls give out,” Thor prods.

Tony snarls, “I _can’t!”_ He looks over at Thor, breathing hard through his nose. “You think I haven’t tried? Every night, I’m out there trying to force myself to look at them but I _can’t_.”

And Thor understands.

“Then I shall navigate for you,” he declares.

“You know our star maps?”

“I know the star maps of all the Nine Realms,” Thor says and winks at him. “It was an elective when I was in school.”

Tony smiles reluctantly and Thor counts it as a win because Tony eases the Quinjet back into acceleration, listening quietly as Thor describes the stars to him.

* * *

Frigga once told Thor that it was good he always had Loki with him, because Thor never thought about anything and Loki always thought about everything. He’d chosen to take it back then as a good thing, something that meant he was decisive and action-oriented and Loki was overly cautious and…well, he’s pretty sure he had used the word _coward_ at one point, though he’s equally certain that he had meant it as a joke even if Loki might not have taken it that way (sometimes, he wonders that Loki had waited as long as he did before putting his plan into action).

Anyway, he’s thinking about that conversation as he strides into Tony’s lab the day after returning from the Quinjet’s test flight. He had considered waiting to tell Tony of his affections until he could be more sure of them, but he is impatient and he doesn’t want to wait any longer than he must. Human lives are already so fleeting, and just because it had taken him a while to figure out his feelings, it doesn’t mean he hadn’t had them before.

“Hey, Point Break,” Tony says cheerfully as Thor enters the workshop. DUM-E beeps excitedly and wheels over with the fire extinguisher in his claw. “DUM-E, no. Just because his shirt is red, that doesn’t mean he’s on fire. I _will_ donate you to the community college if you spray him down again. Not that you don’t look absolutely _fantastic_ dripping in foam, but you know, looks like an expensive shirt, I’d hate to ruin it.”

“Tony, you’re a billionaire,” Thor says amusedly.

“That I am. Excellent point.” Tony wheels around in his spinny chair—as Clint calls it—and gets up, heading for the smoothie machine. “Can I tempt you? Got a new order of honey in from the farmer’s market right outside the city.”

“No, I actually—”

“Oh, hey, before I forget, did Steve talk to you? He and Natasha got a lead on Hydra. Something about this bunker in New Jersey, I wasn’t really paying attention; honestly, I just try to avoid the whole state if I can. Anyway, they want us to meet them there tomorrow, and—”

“Tony.” Thor joins him next to the blender and unplugs it before Tony can start it up.

Tony looks at him, seems to realize that he’s actually serious, and goes quiet, motioning for him to continue.

“I wanted to talk to you,” Thor continues.

“Is this about the stars?” Tony asks worriedly. “Because I can—”

“No,” Thor interrupts. “And even if it were, we are a team. We help each other to get over our hurdles, you know that.” Tony looks away and Thor remembers the time when Tony had told him he originally hadn’t been recommended for the Avengers because Fury hadn’t believed him capable of working with a team. “This isn’t about that. I wanted to speak to you because I wish to ask if you would be open to me courting you.”

He believes that Tony will be. They’ve been working together closely for months and they’ve had many meaningful conversations during that time. He’s caught Tony staring at his arms sometimes with dilated eyes, seen him lick his lips when Thor lifted engines several times Tony’s weight with as much ease as he lifts the babies their fans keep shoving at him to hold. And perhaps Tony flirts with everyone and everything—including, on occasion, the coffee maker—but there always seems to be something nervous about his flirtations with Thor, like they _mean_ something more to him. He _wants_ it to mean something more.

He believes Tony will say yes, which is why it so surprises him when Tony huffs and says, “No.”

What?

“What?”

“If that’ll be all, Point Break, you know where the door is.” Tony points toward it with a pencil.

“Tony—”

“Thor.”

Thor falls silent. Tony rarely uses names, unless he’s completely serious.

“Look.” Tony drums his fingers against his chest, his nails making an odd sound against the arc reactor. “Look, I’m forty-two years old, at _best_ , I’m less than halfway through my lifespan, but let’s face it, this lifestyle isn’t exactly the best option for a long life. I know I’ve wasted a lot of my life up to this point, but I’m done wasting it.”

“So why wouldn’t—”

“Because you don’t love me,” Tony snaps. He sighs and sinks back down into his chair, tilting his face up to the ceiling. Slowly, Thor sits down on the couch Tony keeps in the workshop, carefully watching him. “Thor, you said it yourself, you’re never going to love anyone as much as you do your soulmate, whoever that may be, and I’m sorry but I want to be someone’s one and only. I want to matter to someone. The only thing I can be for you is a distraction at best and a placeholder at worst. So, no, I’m not open to you courting me.”

Stunned, Thor sits there for a moment. He’s never been turned away before, not by anyone, and to have it happen _now_ , with someone that he’s slowly coming to realize means more to him than he’d originally thought…

Eventually, he says, “I see. I’ll leave you in peace then.” He stands and leaves.

* * *

The thing is, Thor has never before come across a people who don’t have soulmates. He has never had to deal with the fact that someone might not like that he could never love them as much as his soulmate because _everyone_ knows that they’re just a placeholder in each other’s lives. Some three or four centuries ago, Thor himself had spent forty years as a lover to a Vanir before she had found her soulmate and left him and he had felt nothing but happiness for her good fortune. Tony’s reaction is alien to him.

The thing is, it’s not until Tony says no to him that he realizes just what he has lost. He’s known for weeks that he is attracted to Tony and known almost as long that it’s an emotion that goes deeper than what he’s usually used to. But he hadn’t known just how deep the depths of those emotions are until Tony gave him that sad smile and tells him no.

The thing is, he’s never given his whole heart to someone before, never even thought it possible—but Tony makes him want to try.

* * *

He finds Tony a few days after his revelation. He’d decided to wait for two reasons: partially to give Tony a chance to pull himself back together after Thor’s confession and partially to make sure that he’s certain about both his feelings and his plan. It seems like the least he could do after Tony had bared himself to him.

Fortunately, once he is completely certain, it isn’t hard to find Tony at all. Thor had assumed, based on what he’s heard about Tony from both Pepper and Tony himself, that as soon as their conversation was over, Tony would have bolted, but when Thor goes down for breakfast that day, Tony is sitting at the bar, sipping on a cup of coffee. He glances over at Thor and gives a little wave before going back to his coffee.

“Good morning,” Thor says carefully, in case Tony is too tired to realize it’s him

“Morning, God of Hammers.”

Definitely realizes it’s him.

He joins Tony in the kitchen and busies himself with his own cup of coffee, wondering how best to say what’s on his mind.

“Come on, just spit it out,” Tony says.

Or Tony could just do that.

“I was hoping you might be willing to reconsider our conversation from a few days ago,” he says slowly, trying to sound like he isn’t pushing. Natasha has spoken with him at length about pushy men who refuse to take no for an answer and he doesn’t want to turn into one of those.

Tony gives him a tired look. “And why should I do that?”

“Because,” he begins, still thinking out his words as he says them, “there are things I think you should know.”

“Like what?”

“Like…” He shakes his head and decides to just go for it. He doesn’t think things through all the time but everything always seems to work out. “Like I’ve never met anyone who doesn’t have a soulmate before. I believe Midgardians are alone in that. You said you didn’t want to become a placeholder. That’s not something I’ve ever had to worry about because everyone I have ever been with has known that they’re a placeholder. I myself understand that I am one.”

“You’re not making a very good case for yourself,” Tony says as he takes an obnoxiously loud sip from his drink.

Thor tells himself not to get annoyed and continues, “I’ve never had to question whether the strength of my belief in my soulmate was hurting someone else because everyone else has had their own soulmate to question them. Then you come along; you worry that I might be lonely because I’m waiting for my soulmate. No one’s ever done that for me before, but it’s completely natural to you. Tony, do you have any idea how incredible that is? Even amongst your people, your heart stands out above the rest. You tell me that you want to be someone’s one and only, and I don’t even know if I can do that for you but I want to. Sváss, you make me want to give you my whole heart, and I know that you don’t believe me right now. But I’m asking that you let me try.”

“Thor—”

“If there’s anything I’ve learned watching your Midgardian shows, it’s that relationships don’t always last, even when you want them to.” He leans across the bar and lays his hand atop Tony’s. “I can’t promise that I will love you forever, just as you cannot promise that _you_ will love _me_ forever. But I _can_ promise you this: as long as I love you, you will always be first in my heart. You will never come second to anyone.”

Tony’s eyes are suspiciously shiny, and Thor would usually expect that Tony would dash the wetness away, but he doesn’t move even a little bit. “But your soulmate,” he whispers.

Thor shakes his head. “Not even my soulmate could replace you.” He leans forward still further and brushes a kiss against Tony’s cheek. “You deserve to be loved, Tony, and I want to be the one to give it to you, all the days of your life. Please, sváss, let me try.”

Tony turns his head just enough to capture Thor’s lips with his. Their kiss is achingly gentle, light enough that it feels almost like a dream. But this is real. Tony is _here_ and Thor is _kissing_ him and he could never dream something as perfect as this.

“We can try,” Tony whispers.

* * *

They’ve been dating for five years when Thor finally hears it.

It’s been five long, _good_ years. The team tracked down Loki and the Tesseract and defeated the Mad Titan with the help of a few new friends they found in space (Thor will never forget how excited Tony had been when he met Carol Danvers, apparently one of Tony’s oldest friends). They uncovered Hydra in SHIELD—and found Steve’s close friend, long thought lost, in the process. They never did figure out what was going on with the second Hulk during the Battle of New York, but they _did_ discover a secret society of wizards with a secret lair on Bleecker Street.

Tony retired last year, claiming that he’s getting too old to continue flying the suit. He alternates his time now between the new Avengers Compound upstate, helping Bucky train the next generation of Avengers, and the Tower. Thor does the same thing, though he still serves on the team. It’s much changed now. Steve and Natasha are still on the team with him but there are a whole lot of new faces too: the Maximoff twins and Sam Wilson and Rhodey and several ex-SHIELD agents. In the evenings, he flies home to the Tower, where Tony is almost never waiting for him because he’s always distracted by something in the workshop.

They’re doing good these days. Tony has just about stopped looking worriedly at Thor every time they hear someone singing nearby. Thor himself has stopped listening to every single song he hears, wondering if the singer is his soulmate. It gives him hope, that they finally understand each other, that Tony has come to believe him when he says that he’s not going anywhere, that Thor has finally proven himself.

The day he finally hears his Heartsong begins like just about every other day. Thor wakes early in the morning and reaches across the bed to Tony, only to remember halfway through reaching that Tony has an early morning flight to Germany today. Now that he’s starting to wake up a little more, he can hear the shower running in their bathroom. He’s idly thinking about joining Tony in their spacious shower when he hears Tony start to sing.

And that’s when it happens.

Something clicks into place in his heart and for the first time in all his long years, he can _understand_ the words of his Heartsong. The enormity of the moment would have sent him flat on his back had he not already been lying down.

“Oh,” he chokes out.

So this is the moment the poets write about. This is what a thousand songs are written for. This is—this is—

This is _Tony._

His soulmate is _Tony_.

Distantly, he recognizes that Tony has stopped singing, but it doesn’t mean anything to him until Tony calls out, “Thor? You doing okay in there?”

He has a choice, he realizes. Does he tell Tony that they’re soulmates now or does he wait? In the space of an instant, he thinks of every time Tony has giving him that terrified look when someone sings. He thinks of how, even though it doesn’t happen nearly as often as it used to these days, it’s still a look that he sees far too frequently for his liking. Tony doesn’t fully believe him yet, doesn’t fully trust that the only place Thor wants to be is right by his side, and while he thinks that he could dispel all those concerns in an instant if he told Tony that they’re soulmates, he also thinks that Tony would always wonder _what if_. Tony would always question if Thor was there with him because they’re soulmates and not because he loves him.

“Thor?”

Does he say something?

Does he wait?

“I’m fine, beloved!” he calls back, making his decision. He’s not done proving himself yet. He has waited a thousand years for Tony, he can handle waiting a few more.

“You sure? For a moment there, you sounded like a dying cat.”

Ah yes, his soulmate, such a charmer. He chuckles. “Your darling dog decided to jump on my stomach,” he shouts. _Not yet_ , he decides. _I won’t tell him yet._

_But soon…_


End file.
